Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-08-18
An Authors Early Readings.

We sat up late before the big fire, at
night, our faces burning in the glow,
and our backs and feet freezing in the
draft that swept in from the imper-
tectly closing door. and then we boys
climbed to our bed in the loft, We
reached it by q ladder, which we
should have been glad to pull up after
us, as protection against Indians in
the pioneer fashion; but with the adj
vancement of modern luxury, the
ladder had been nailed to the floor
Once aloft, however, we were in a
domain sacred to the past. The rude
floor ratified and wavered loosely under
our tread, and the window in the
gable stood open or shut at its own
will. There were cracks in the shin
giles, through which. we could see the
stars, and which, when the first snow
came, let the fakes sift in upon the
floor. l should not like to step out of
bed into a snow-wreath in the morn
ing now, but then l was glad to do it,
and, so far from thinking that or any
thing in our life hardship, counted
it all joy.
Our barrels of paper-covered books
were stored away in that loft, and,
overhauling them one day, found
paper copy of the poems of certain
Henry w. Longfellow, then wholly
unknown to me; and while the old
grist-mill, whistling and wheeling to
itself, made a vague music in my
ears, my soul was filled with this new
strange sweetness. | read the "Span-
ish Student" there, and the "Coplas
de Manrique," and the solemn and
ever-beautiful "Voices of the Night"
There were other books in those
barrels which l must have read also,
but remember only these, that spir-
tied me again to Spain, where I had
already been with Irving, and led me
to attack seriously the old Spanish
grammar which had been knocking
about our house ever since our father
bought it from soldier of the Mexican
war.
But neither these nor any other
books made me discontented with the
small boys world about me. They
made it little more populous with
visionary shapes, but that was well,
and there was room for them all. 1t
was not darkened with cares, and the
duties in it were not many.
We had book in those days called
Western Adventure" which was
made up of tales of pioneer and
frontier life, and we were constantly
reading ourselves back into that life.
/ have wondered often since who wrote
or compiled that book. We had
printed it ourselves in D., from the
stereotype plates of some contem-
porary publisher whose name is quite
lost to me. This book, and "Howe's
Collections for the History of Ohio"
were full of stories of the backwoods-
men and warriors who had made our
state the battle-ground for nearly fifty
years, and our own life in the log
cabin gave new zest to the tales of
"Simon Kenton, the Pioneer" and
"Simon Gerty, the Renegade;" of the
of Crawford and his death at
the stake; of the massacre of the Mo-
ravian Indians at Gnadenhutten; of
the defeat of St. Clair and the victory
of Wayne; of a hundred other wild
and bloody incidents of our annals.
We read of them at night till we
were afraid to go up the ladder to the
ambuscade of savages in our loft, but
we fought them over by day with un-
daunted spirits. With our native TO-
nance I sometimes mingled with my
own reading a strain of old-world
poetry, and "Hamet ell Zegri" and the
"Unknown Spanish Knight" encoun-
tered in the Vega before Granada ON
our island, while Adam Poe and Big
foot were taking breath from their
deadly struggle in the waters of the
Ohio.-4W D. HoaUeIls, in Youths Com
p0nion. 3.